


Thaw

by Auchen



Category: The Blacklist (TV)
Genre: Angst, Drama, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Inspired by a prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-31
Updated: 2017-05-31
Packaged: 2018-11-07 04:39:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,149
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11051505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Auchen/pseuds/Auchen
Summary: An investigation goes awry and Red and Liz find themselves locked inside a freezer with nothing to do but wait for rescue. While inside, Liz finds herself realizing the truth depths of Red's devotion to her.





	Thaw

**Author's Note:**

> This was inspired by an anon on tumblr who gave me a prompt to write a fic based on the Castle episode in which Castle and Beckett were locked in a walk-in freezer. This fic follows some of the same emotional notes of that scene, but I tried to make it different enough to fit Red and Liz. Hopefully you guys find something enjoyable about it!

Liz didn't know whether banging her hands or the butt of her gun against the door was a better idea. One option might bloody her knuckles (or break her hand), and the other might render her gun useless when she needed it.

She settled on trying to search the door for a lock first, flicking the flashlight option on her phone as she leaned in close to the door. The bars on her phone told her that there was no signal. If there had been, calling someone would've been her first choice.

"There's not going to be a lock you can pick," Red said from behind her. "You're wasting your time."

Her brow furrowed and she set her jaw as she scanned the light across the door. "You can't know that. I'm going to consider every reasonable option that I can."

"Clearly, Wallaceton anticipated that we might track him here. Given how meticulous he's been so far with his crimes, do you really think he'd take the chance that a possible trap could be easily escaped? No, if there is a lock, it's going to be sabotaged in some way." He walked up beside her, shoes crunching on the frost that had settled in the freezer.

She gritted her teeth, hands tightening around the edges of her phone. Logically, he was right, but did he just have to stand there, just looking down at her.

"Well, instead of criticizing my ideas, how about you try to help me out and figure out a workable solution?" She switched the flashlight off and swept her hands over her pants.

She crossed her arms and his eyes flickered down to her, expression almost unreadable beneath his hat and in the blue light of the freezer. That light washed everything out, painting her black shirt navy and turning her skin almost translucent. It reminded her of the cold, harsh lighting in sci-fi films.

His mouth half parted and he glanced away from her. "Loath as I am to say it, I'm afraid our best option at the moment is inaction. As I said, Wallaceton was meticulous. We can't simply escape here without outside help."

Throwing her hands in the air, she took a step back from him and huffed an exasperated laugh, the gasp of her breath floating out into the air. "I'm not just going to stand here."

She marched towards the right wall of the freezer and took a step back, ramming into it with her shoulder. A metallic clang echoed through the room and she jolted back, her hand going to her shoulder, pulling in sharp, hissing breaths between her teeth, hand clenching and unclenching as lines of pain raced up her arm.

Red grabbed onto her hips, avoiding touching her sore shoulders, and pulled her away from the wall. "What the hell are you doing, Lizzie?"

"I'm--aah..." she sucked in another breath, fingers massaging her shoulder. He spun her to face him.

"I'm trying to find a way out. I was going to test the wall to see if there's a weak point, and maybe if there's someone in these surrounding buildings, they might hear us." Liz dropped her hand from her shoulder. It still hurt, but she didn't want to oversell it and make him fuss over her.

"There _is_ no one around. The building this freezer is in is unused, as are the buildings surrounding it. And does any part of this room look weak to you?" He raised a hand, waving it towards the walls.

A shiver passed through her body, and she began to rub her bare forearms. "No one knows where we are. The only thing the Post Office knows is that we went to see that forgery expert friend of yours, and neither of us told him where we were going."

His eyes flicked to her arms, gaze traveling over the raised goosebumps on her flesh. "Whatever the failings of the Bureau, I must admit that you Feds tend to be unrelenting when it comes to finding one of their own. And besides, my people will be looking for us too."

A reassuring smile slid across his face. "Trust me, we won't be here much longer."

She rubbed her hands harder over her arms. The cold was starting to slice into her, pricking her body like tiny needles. "I hope you're right," she said.

Red was probably just using optimism to keep his spirits up so he didn't give up. He'd probably had to learn ways to distract himself from the various dire scenarios he seemed to find himself in on a constant basis. If he started giving up hope that he could survive, then his resolve might begin to crumble.

"In that case, we need to keep warm so someone doesn't find a pair of popsicles. We should..."

She bit her lip. They had two options: huddle for warmth, or pace to keep their body temperatures up. If they sat down, they'd be conserving energy and would be exchanging heat with each other, but it would also be easier to become numb and slip into unconsciousness. If they kept moving, that would also keep their temperature up, but it would also waste energy and oxygen. Then, they might suffocate before they froze.

"Let's sit and conserve heat between each other," she said, shifting from foot to foot. "People have survived in worse conditions than this."

There--optimism. She could muster it sometimes.

This time, he didn't shoot her idea down. Red just nodded and took her hand, leading her towards the wall. He started to lean back into it and slid down, settling down on the floor. He looked down at his pants and sighed.

"These were one of my favorite pairs of pants. They're going to be ruined now." He pinched two fingers into the fabric and picked at it, frowning down at his legs.

She snorted and sat down beside him, eyes glancing down at the pants that were probably worth an exorbitant amount. Using humor as a deflection tactic? Classic Red.

"I think your pants are the least of our worries," she said, teeth starting to chatter.

Any trace of a smile on his face dropped immediately, and he wrapped an arm around her and pulled her tight into his side. 

* * *

She drifted in a white haze, like she was wandering through a thick fog, walking deeper into some unknown land, confused and afraid, but unable to find her way back to where she'd come from. Liz's mind was about to wander deeper until something started to jostle her.

Red shook her shoulder, hands hard and digging into her shoulder.

"Lizzie!“ he said, voice hoarse and frantic.

She just grunted and further huddled into him, not moving from her position on his chest.

She was so tired. Red was always bothering her. Why couldn’t he just leave her with this moment’s peace? She spent every waking moment doing what _he_ wanted–chasing a criminal he brought her, going to some ridiculous establishment with terrible, strange food, meeting with associates…

Couldn’t he let her rest for once? Couldn’t he let her do what _she_ wanted for once?

"Lizzie, please…”

Something about the desperation in his voice twisted her heart. Red didn't beg. He manipulated or took what he wanted, he didn't plead for things. His pride and cunning wouldn't allow it.

His hand brushed over her cheek--a streak of warmth blooming across her skin in the wake of his touch. Her eyes flickered open and she shifted her head so she could look up at him.

"What?" she mumbled, tongue thick and clumsy, useless in her jaw.

"You were falling asleep," he said, voice calmer than it had been. He shifted her against him, pulling her up so she leaned on the edge of his shoulder.

That news sent an electric lance of fear down through her nerves. If she'd been locked in this freezer alone with no one to watch her, she might've lapsed into a sleep she'd never have woken up from. Her heartbeat hammered a drum in her ears.

Liz rubbed the back of her hand over her eyes, blinking rapidly. "Sorry, I...I didn't realize," she said.

He brushed a stiff piece of hair off of her face. She swallowed. How long had they been in here that her hair had started to freeze?

"We need something to occupy ourselves. Perhaps you could tell me a story?" He smirked. "I'm the one always besieging you with stories. I might as well play fair and let you tell me one for once."

She nodded, pulling at the sleeve of her shirt, trying to yank it further down onto her arm. If she had to concentrate on recalling something from long ago, she would be less likely to start slipping away again. But the only thing she could think of was a story unfortunately related to their current predicament. It kept looping around in her mind like a record that was skipping. Given Red's dark sense of humor, maybe he'd find the irony in it.

“There was this cabin Sam and I used to go up to sometimes in the winter,” she started. It was almost painful to talk. Her teeth clicked together, and the cold bit into her tongue.

“One time when I was...” she squinted, mind foggy, as if the cold was freezing her brain too.

“...Maybe I was eight or nine. We were walking around in the woods around the cabin, and I found a deer. It was dead--frozen to death, but I thought...”

A violent shudder ran through her body, and Red began to shed his jacket, trying to drape it over her. Dimly, she remembered sometimes people that were in the final stages of hypothermia began undressing themselves. Had he reached that point?

She leaned away from him, pushing his hands away as he tried to wrap the jacket over her. “Don’t do that. You need it.”

“Nonsense. I’m wearing more layers of clothing than you in the first place. You need this more than I do.” He managed to slip the jacket over her shoulders as she dropped her hands, thinking over his explanation.

His mind hadn’t entered a deluded, frenzied state brought on by the ravages of hypothermia. He was just willing to hasten his own potential demise so that she could have a few more minutes of warmth than he did.

“You can’t--”

“You were telling me a story,” he said, edge of his mouth trying to twitch into a smile. “I hate to leave a story unfinished, as it is immensely unsatisfying, so why don’t you tell me the end?”

Jerking her head in a nod, she settled back against him, huddling into the too-large jacket, tucking her chin in and buttoning the first few buttons so her mouth was protected.

“I found a deer that had frozen to death. It looked like...it had just fallen asleep.” She closed her eyes, and she could see the animal once more. It had been an adult doe laying under a tree, the tip of its nose tucked beneath its hind legs, looking like it was just waiting for the sun to rise.

She opened her eyes again, staring up at the blue ceiling. “I don’t think it had been dead long. The ice crystals were still clinging to the little whiskers on its nose.”

Her eyes flicked up to Red, whose eyes were lowered, watching her every move. There was frost lining his long eyelashes, and it reminded her so much of the ice on the deer’s fur.

“I asked Sam if we could bury it, and he told me no, because nature would take care of it. I was mad at the time, but I eventually understood. He didn’t want to disturb the natural process of things.” She sighed and lowered her head again, pressing her forehead into his shoulder. He was starting to lose that sharp, musky, smell she always associated with him. Or perhaps she could no longer smell it because her nose was becoming numb.

“So I understood why Sam thought the way he did but I just wish...” she inhaled, “that there was someone that was going to take care of us.”

“Someone is going to come,” he said, and she couldn’t believe the confidence that rang in his voice.

Maybe she'd been able to be optimistic the first few minutes they were locked in, but it was becoming increasingly hard when she could feel herself going numb, could feel the cold crawling into her body and settling its tendrils down inside her. At a certain point, didn't they have to admit the most likely outcome?

“No they’re not,” she snapped. “No one has any idea that we’re here, there’s no way we can contact anyone, and there’s no way to get out!”

“They’re going to come,” he repeated sounding as confident as he had the first time. He rubbed her shoulder with his stiff fingers and said, “But until then, I’m gonna take care of you.”

Liz choked out a laugh and shook her head, cheek moving across the stiff, chilled fabric of his suit. How could he be so resolute in his strange devotion to her, even now, when they were probably going to die? Even some good people she’d known might’ve left her there against the wall while they tried to find a way out, and she wouldn’t have blamed them.

Not Red.

Stubborn man that he was, it seemed that he was going to stay with her, even if it came to a fatal conclusion.

She sniffled and tucked her head beneath his chin, taking some solace in hearing the steady thump of his heart. At least it was some tangible proof that they were both still alive.

“You’ve gotten out of worse scrapes than this,” she said. It wasn’t a question, because she’d heard his seemingly endless stories of being captured in obscure and terrible conditions, only to come out alive and thriving on the other side.

“Yes,” he said, nodding, chin brushing against the crown of her head as he did. “Which is why we’re going to get out of this.”

“So you’re kind of like my lucky charm,” she said, fingers pulling the jacket closer to herself. It was a ridiculous thing to say, she knew, but she was trying to play into Red’s optimism the way she had earlier. That, and she probably wasn’t thinking clearly anymore.

He was silent for so long she thought he hadn't heard her. But then, the ghost of his lips pressed against the top of her head, just for a moment. It wasn't a verbal response, but somehow she knew it was a response all the same.

"Tell me another story, but perhaps something less fatalistic this time?" he said, voice gentle.

"Yeah, that...that would probably be best." She exhaled, watching the gasp of her breath drift up into the air like it was some piece of her soul escaping her body.

"When I was young, I had this dog..."

* * *

"Red?"

It was so hard to speak now, much less think of what to say. It seemed like just saying that single syllable of his name was the hardest thing she'd ever done.

"Yes?"

Of course he'd answered. He always did, no matter what.

"I...I just--"

She lowered her numb cheek to his chest, pressing her ear down hard against his body, listening to the thud of his heart. Was it any slower than it had been awhile ago? Her fingers curled into his suit.

"Th-thank you. For caring."

For caring about this. About everything.

"I will always care about you, Lizzie," he said, kissing her temple.

"I know," she said, laughing weakly.

In her addled mind, she was reminded of that scene from Star Wars (she didn't even remember which one anymore):

_'I love you.'_

_'I know.'_

Maybe she wouldn't have been willing to admit it any other time, but what he'd done for her all this time was a kind of love, wasn't it? Whether it was romantic or chivalric or...any other version of love, standing by someone like that, no matter what, even when you might freeze to death beside each other, wasn't that love?

It was the strange, ethereal kind of love that she'd read about but never really understood. The kind in fairy tales that made people do impossible things for each other.

If this was a fairy tale, they would be fine. In fact, if it was a fairy tale, it would probably end with Red kissing her, and somehow she'd be alive again--they'd both be alive--and they'd be fine, and she could go back to chasing criminals and getting on planes to go to Kuala Lumpur at the last moment, and she and Red would fight and they would be a team, and it would be _fine fine fine_ \--

* * *

Light.

Warmth.

Shouting.

Someone grabbing onto her, throwing a blanket over her shoulders, trying to rush her out of the freezer while she tried to cling onto Red, because that was the only thing her frozen mind cared about at the moment--was he fine, was he alive, was _he_ \--?

* * *

The touch of the outside air had been like an electric shock, but she'd gradually grown used to being warm again. Her mind was still disoriented, and she still didn't remember how she'd gotten out of the freezer, or the details Ressler had rattled off to her about how they'd figured out where she was, but that didn't matter.

Because Red was next to her, a scratchy, pale blanket thrown over his shoulders too, complaining loud enough for those around them to hear about how he'd almost been reduced to a frozen dinner, and about how maybe if the FBI had a single, slightly intelligent neuron in their brains, he and Agent Keen wouldn't have been trapped inside their own tiny ice age.

He was unhappy, of course, but much of the complaining was blustery showmanship, and perhaps a bit of him simply letting off steam at anyone that got close enough. An unhappy, cold Red wasn't a good thing to be around, it seemed.

But it seemed she was exempted from that dissatisfaction, because when everyone else had drifted a sufficient distance away for a minute, he glanced over at her and took a step closer, taking her hand beneath her blanket.

She lifted her eyebrows in question.

"Well, it looks like we were well taken care of," he said.

"Yes," she said, nodding. "Because we took care of each other."

He couldn't contain the wide smile that spread across his face, and warmth flickered in his eyes, like he had seen something wonderful for the first time.

She felt something inside her begin to thaw.


End file.
